Massey Referendum Debunked

In the latest copy of Salient you carried a letter from a Mr John Swilliam (or John S. William) calling for a referendum to be held at Victoria on sporting contacts with South Africa. In support of this idea Mr Swilliam mentions the Massey University Students' Association referendum on the same matter which appeared to show a majority of students are in favour of sporting contacts with South Africa.

There are a number of points I should like to raise about these matters.

1.	When MUSA called the referendum they did not appear to take much effort to make students aware of the various questions around this issue.
2.	The wording of the question on the referendum paper was confusing to say the least, and the results I feel are not conclusive. (the question asked was; 'Do you want Massey University Students' Association to have a policy to active opposition to the rugby tour of South Africa.')
3.	A referendum of Canterbury on the same issue and after much effort by the President to ensure that students had access to the views of proponents on all sides of the issue, resulted in support being given to cessation of all sporting contacts with South Africa.
4.	The general question of the validity of referenda must also be raised. A decision which is not immediately preceeded by debate and discussion is to my mind irrelevant. People in our society have been encouraged to accept the status quo, and without definite action to get all those involved in the decision-making process to take part in debate, the current views on matters cannot be effectively questioned in order to give people real choice.
5.	It was probably because of the essentially undemocratic nature of referenda, that those people who drafted the constitution of VUWSA placed safeguards against the random calling of referenda. According to VUWSA's constitution, referenda can only be called on conjunction with executive elections and then only when the executive agrees to its inclusion on the voting paper.

I hope by these few comments to have to some extent stemmed the tide of those mindless individuals who wish to resolve important and pertinent questions of the day by referenda, without any attempt to place fairly and squarly before the students, the real arguments relating to the questions.